Think Of The Children
by AHeartForStories
Summary: Set during TP. The village of Ordon is quiet after their children were taken during the raid. As Uli tends to a wounded Rusl, her thoughts are with their sons.


_Taking a minor break from Httyd fics to post this TP fic. My first Zelda fic ever, despite growing up more with Zelda than Httyd._

_Constructive criticism is appreciated!_

_Enjoy!_

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**Think Of The Children**

All was quiet in the village of Ordon.

Though usually bustling with life, the sun was setting over the land. The people and animals quieted down around this time of the day. However, it wasn't the reason why a tense silence took hold of this simple community.

The children had been taken.

From their eldest two to their very youngest, an army of orkish-like creatures, called bulblins, had come to rip them all away from their families and their homes. There were no warnings before the attack, no reason given as to why they had to take the little ones.

Ordon was a village just outside of the borders of the kingdom of Hyrule in the Ordona Province. Small, surrounded by woods, insignificant compared to more wealthy places such as Castle Town or even other villages like Kakariko. Besides their famous goat cheese or pumpkins, there was little they could offer as ransom for the safe return of the children. Certainly no rupees.

Their mayor, Bo, surely tried. Though no message for ransom had been sent thus far, the man sought for anything he could give. To search for the raiders and bring them all back himself wasn't out of the question either. For the sons and daughters of himself and his people, he'd give even his life.

It's what the village's only blacksmith, Rusl, had almost done.

He lay unconscious on the couch in their home, bandaged from head to toe for the injuries sustained during the raid that cost them their offspring.

When the monsters invaded, he fought with everything he had. He tried so desperately hard to keep them from being taken, but he was the only one with any sort of experience with a sword. Ordonians weren't swordsmen or women and certainly no knights. They were ordinary people, farmers. They never stood a chance.

Even after Rusl had failed, he still sought to protect his home. The Bulblins never returned, but he stayed vigilant until he inevitably succumbed to his wounds and exhaustion. The only hostile creature seen was a wolf and even it hadn't seem like it wanted to pose much of a threat in hindsight.

His wife sat on a stool next to him. A fever had popped up during the night and she was attempting to cool him down with a wet cloth. A bowl of water sat on her lap. There wasn't much else to do.

Chores were left undone. Uli wasn't sure she could bring herself to do any of them, to go about her day and pretend like nothing was out of sorts.

It was much too quiet in their home too.

Their youngest son, Colin, he usually had some wild story to tell. Though a timid boy, there was always a story he heard from Talo or something he'd seen his older brother do. Just last week, he claimed he'd seen one of the fairies of the forest.

Their eldest wasn't someone with a lot to say either, but there was a certain presence that Link brought with him everywhere he went. He didn't need to say anything, him being there was always more than enough. A brave teen with a certain wild ferocity that grew and grew with every year ever since Rusl had found a Hylian baby boy in the woods one early Spring.

Though Colin's brother, he acted like one for all the children in the village. They all admired him. Ilia, the mayor's daughter, she was like the elder sister.

With both of those boys gone, a silence like death fell over their home. Uli was quite certain the same could be said of all the other brokenhearted families in Ordon.

She knew the same counted for everybody else in the village. The ruined pumpkin fields were left untouched. There was a stray goat here and there, it had taken them everything just to get the majority back to the ranch. Sera's shop was still empty, she hadn't re-stocked the little that she still had left.

With the young ones taken, the warm and life-giving spirit of Ordon had been drained from its very people.

"Link… Colin… My boys…" Rusl muttered. His tone spoke of the profound loss he felt. Nobody saw their sons or Ilia be taken, but when a search for the three after the raid had ended yielded no results, there was only one conclusion they could come to.

Rusl, Uli, Bo, they were all devastated. Everyone in the village was.

Thinking back to their family made Uli choke up. Her husband spoke often about them in his restless slumber, his thoughts were with them and so were Uli's.

Link and Colin, wherever they are, they must be so scared. Link was a brave soul, he would try to stay strong for the kids, but she knew Colin must be frightened.

All the awful things they might be going through, so far away from safety and home, so many scenarios plagued her for hours on end. A dark part of her even wondered whether Link was even still alive at this point. Though a smart young man, she feared his want to protect might've gotten him into more trouble than he could handle.

Rusl and his closest friends from outside of Ordon were part of a group calling themselves "the Resistance". Rusl wasn't a stranger to traveling or to battles. She'd heard some of the horrors that happened to people kidnapped during raids such as this through him. The thought of any of it happening to even one of theirs made her stomach churn terribly.

Removing the cloth from Rusl's forehead to dump it back into the bowl of water on her lap, some of her tears fell. She couldn't hold any of them back. A sob escaped.

The baby she still carried, just another two months away from being born, she could feel it kick in her womb. Though usually so calming and reassuring, the sensation almost caused her distress. Instead of wondering what it would look like, whether it would be a boy or a girl, she imagined all the ways in which they could possibly lose it.

It was a horrible thought and it almost became too hard for her to breathe. She cried.

"I miss them, Dear. I miss them so much." The silence in the house was killing her and so was the fact that she couldn't wrap her arms around both Link and Colin. She could get up and walk out the front entrance, but she wouldn't find Colin searching for frogs near the stream. She couldn't go up to Fado's ranch to see Link herding the goats back into their pens for the day. It frustrated and saddened her to point that it suffocated her.

Crying was all she could do. It was useless, but there was little else she could do.

Pulling the soaked cloth out, she wrung it through her sobs and her gasps. Placing it back on Rusl's clammy forehead, she then wrapped her arms around herself.

Every night, she prayed to the Hylian goddesses that all the children of Ordon would be returned soon. Unharmed. With their cheery smiles and their rambunctious attitudes intact. And to please, please let her husband recover quickly.

She decided to dab his forehead free of sweat, her own cheeks wet.

And then she paused.

Uli wasn't sure why she stopped tending to Rusl or why her sniffing ceased. There was this quite specific feeling that she felt, something inside of her was telling her that someone was at the door.

Not Pergie, not Sera, or even Bo. Despite their own losses, the rest of the village still checked up on her often. Pergie's uneaten pumpkin soup from this afternoon still sat on the table. It was probably cold by now.

No one knocked, there was no movement outside, but still, there was this feeling. So Uli rushed. The bowl of water and cloth she was using both fell to the floor.

In spite of her condition and her fatigue, she ran and tore the front door open in her hurry, in her dire need to know.

Before her stood a familiar face dressed in an unfamiliar green tunic. Young, but tired and somewhat grimy, Link was at the other side of the door. He looked like he'd been on the road for quite some time with little rest. A hesitant fist of his was raised as if he'd just been about to knock. Though this was still his home too, he hadn't wanted to startle her by simply entering like he usually would. This was the house he'd grown up in.

"Link." Uli felt her emotions overwhelm her. She captured Link in a hug, pulled him inside, and he returned it just as strongly. Having her arms around him, feeling him in her hold, it felt so relieving.

"My boy." Uli sniffed and she felt Link's hold on her tighten in comfort. It was the silent reassurance that he was truly there, he wasn't a figment of her imagination.

After all these long days of worrying with little to no sleep, her eldest son was finally home. Her husband was still stuck in a feverish nightmare and Colin was missing, but Uli allowed herself to relish in knowing that at least Link was healthy and safe.

His reappearance helped her hope that perhaps the other kids would return too.


End file.
